Posts Tagged: Movies

Of all the wonderful opportunities that come along with being a parent, introducing your child to your favourite books, movies, comics, and music is one of the greatest. When deciding on how to decorate our nursery, my wife and I quickly settled on a theme inspired by two of Hayao Miyazaki’s wonderful films: My Neighbour Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service. These woodblock-inspired posters from Bill Mudron would fit beautifully in our nursery. The drawn back perspective, with an emphasis on Miyazaki’s wonderful worlds, is a nice contrast to the character-centric imagery that you often see associated with films. You get a strong sense of the characters living in this world, of it continuing on past the rolling credits. Terrific stuff.

Posters of Mudron’s Studio Ghibli woodblock prints are available through his online store.

“After a bidding war with Sony, Warner Bros has won the rights to adapt Joe Haldeman’s Hugo- and Nebula-winning sci-fi novel The Forever War,” Tor.com revealed today. The script will be written by Jon Spaihts, writer of Ridley Scott’s much-maligned (but underrated) Prometheus. Tor.com also spilled the beans about the film’s lead: Channing Tatum, of Magic Mike, and Jupiter Ascending fame. He will play William Mandella, an Earth soldier who has to deal with a rapidly changing human society due to the time dilation necessary to travel through interstellar space.

As Tor.com postulates, many questions remain surrounding the adaptation. Will it be set in modern times, or 1977 like the novel? How will the narrative handle the military narrative and political messaging from a modern perspective, versus Haldeman’s firsthand experiences during the Vietnam war. Are we still on the path to an exclusively homosexual human society? It’s a complicated novel, so hopefully the writer and directors are willing to engage with Haldeman’s book on more than a surface level.

My favourite part is when Muldoo, er… Indiana Jon, uh… Star-Lord becomes one with the velociraptors and leads them on an all-out assault against the hybridosaurus rex. All while riding a motorcycle, natch. Oh, and also the part where they forget about the fact that the first Jurassic Park was already about genetically modified dinosaurs.

Jurassic World hits theatres on June 12th, 2015. I’m already camping outside the theatre to get tickets.

Star Wars: Episode VII rumours are like crack for the SFF community. We know they’re no good for us, we know they’ll whisper lies and false promises in our ear, but, dammit, it’s just so hard to say no. This latest round of rumours, reported on by The Hollywood Reporter, is chockfull of casting news, including: Smaug, Sherlock and Kahn himself, Benedict Cumberbatch; Chiwetel Ejiofor of 12 Years a Slave fame; and Breaking Bad star Jesse Plemons.

More on those rumours:

Never has a project attracted so much ink about meetings, but such is the passionate interest in Star Wars. Last fall, every few weeks there was a breathless reveal of a meeting, with names such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael B. Jordan, Jack O’Connell, Alex Pettyfer, Saoirse Ronan and Sullivan Stapleton coming up. And those are only the names that leaked out.

With all the actors being tossed around — including a report this week that Breaking Bad’s Jesse Plemons was meeting with director J.J. Abrams about a role — Heat Vision thought it was time to check in on Star Wars in general.

Sources confirm Plemons is on the list to chat with Abrams for Episode VII (and possibly the entire trilogy), with a meeting set to take place this week. But he is only one of a long string of actors on Abrams’ meeting list.

Additionally, there is also a rumour that “Abrams and Lucasfilm are now searching for a 20-something female actress who is either of mixed race or black. The rumor is that Obi-Wan Kenobi had a daughter or granddaughter.”

Oscar-winning writer Michael Arndt left the project in the fall of 2013, and The Hollywood Reporter says, “According to multiple insiders, the reason for the parting of ways was not due to a timeframe issue, as has been reported, but rather due to a difference of opinion of which characters to emphasize.”

Reportedly, Arndt’s script involved the children of the Luke, Leia, and Han (whether these characters were based on the existing children from the EU was unclear). “Abrams, however, wanted Episode VII to focus on the classic trio of characters,” says Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter. “So audiences could have one more chance to enjoy them before a fitting send-off. The new characters, the offspring, will now be in supporting roles, according to these sources, and take center stage in Episode VIII and IX. Some characters have disappeared from the Arndt script and new ones are being added.”

Because, you know, it’s not like there’s precedent that each of the trilogies would feature a new generation of Skywalkers or anything…